Student Fellows

Gabriela Arias—Gabi for short—was born and raised in New York City; however, she has called Wallkill, NY home since 2001. As a member of the first generation of her family to be born in the United States, she is proud of her roots. She considers the African ancestry of Dominicans from across the diaspora central to her identity as a Dominican-American woman. The history and culture of Afro-Latinos fascinates her and is an academic interest which she has been fortunate enough to explore at Hamilton College. An Africana Studies major, Gabi is especially interested in the intersections between institutions of public history and the process of historical preservation in communities across the African diaspora. Throughout her college career, she researched the complex relationship between personal and family histories, particularly in marginalized communities, and their preservation in the archives. For two summers, Gabi held internships where she was engaged in digital archival work and humanities-based technology research. In 2009, she aided in building an online, interactive digital archive dedicated to the 1976 student protests in Soweto, South Africa. Later, she delved into two exciting research based internships. First, at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Gabi processed and digitized their extensive collections on the LGBT Puerto Rican community in New York City. Second, she interned at El Museo del Barrio and aided in the development of their website and potential mobile application. An aspiring archivist, Gabi intended to begin graduate school in the fall of 2011 in a Library and Information Sciences program with an emphasis in cultural heritage archival preservation.

Alex Benkhart is a member of the class of 2011 and is a Religious Studies/Asian Studies double major. Alex makes an effort to incorporate digital media into every aspect of his study, having worked independently on examinations of religious visual culture, anime heroines, and the commodification of sex in contemporary Japanese art. Alex has been working closely with Professor Kyoko Omori over the past year to create the Comparative Japanese Film Archive. He says he finds this work very rewarding and hopes to continue with the project until its completion. Alex applied for a Fulbright research grant that would take him to Japan in order to study depictions of homosexuality in Japanese popular culture. Alex’s dream is to ultimately make a documentary on the topic.

Alex Gioia is a member of the class of 2014 at Hamilton college from Torrington, CT. He majored in both Mathematics and Communications. Alex spent a semester in New Zealand, where he studied at the University of Otago. The following summer, Alex worked on Professor Amar's project. The project is an in-depth study of Indian sacred centers. Alex learned 3D modelling software and worked with Kenny Ratliff on constructing interactive 3D models of the sacred sites.

Max Lopez is a member of the class of 2015 and majored in archaeology at Hamilton College. Having been interested in archaeology since a very young age, Max worked with Professor Nathan Goodale on a site in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia. The site consists of a series of pit houses or winter homes for the Native Americans that inhabited it. Max, who had been working with and learning 3D digital modeling software over the previous summer, visited the site and using GPS/GIS technology mapped the pit houses. After that he hoped to create an accurate to life 3D reconstruction of the site that can be walked through and interacted with. Not only will this reconstruction aid in research as a cost effective alternative to a physical reconstruction of the site, but it will also be a new way to get the public involved in the research. Archaeology is a field defined by advancing technology and Max looks to use his knowledge of 3D modeling to continue pushing the field forward in new ways and staying ahead of the curve.After his time as a DHi Student Fellow, Max was accepted into graduate school at both the University of Cambridge and Oxford University. He eventually earned a master's in archaeology at Cambridge University.

Andrew Powers was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest close to the waters of Puget Sound. At the bright age of 19, he headed east to Middlebury College, where he studied geography under an incredible faculty of daring thinkers. Andrew loves history, maps and transformative technology... Probably why SHGIS is the best job he's ever had. He currently lives in Seattle.

Philippa (Pippa) Schwarzkopf was the Digital Humanities Initiative's post-baccalaureate research fellow. As a senior DHi Intern, Pippa worked on a variety of oral history projects, both capturing interviews as a videographer and creating archives as a metadata cataloguer. Following graduation, she continued to assist on projects as a videographer, video editor, and creative consultant while training the interns who will continue the DHi's exploration of documentary film as a research component. She is currently pursuing a career in independent film with an interest in multimedia and alternative forms of interactive narrative. Through her work with the DHi, Pippa hoped to improve her technological literacy, further her skills in film production, and gain exposure to a growing field of creative approaches to integrated digital scholarship.

Nicolas Sohl is a Southern California native that uses GIS and photography as a medium to highlight the connections between, and use of, our natural, urban, and social environments. Nicolas’s photography has been shown in several solo shows and was featured by National Geographic and CNN. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and his work is enriched by his studies in geography. He currently lives in St. Kitts and Nevis, where he concurrently works with the SHGIS and works as a project manager for on-island development projects. His work with the SHGIS has focused on understanding and visualizing the spatial-temporal dynamics of African neighborhood removals in the 19th and 20th century in order to better understand how forced removals to Soweto effected neighborhood population densities and public health in Johannesburg and Soweto.